Back in April I interviewed Rosa Menkman for what came to be this article. She is an absolutely prolific artist working in the field of audio and visual glitches. Much of her work can be found on her website (see above link), flickr photostream, and Vimeo page.
A total of 5 artists were interviewed for the article, but due to concerns about length I only included excerpts from each. Since then, I have been periodically releasing the full interviews here on Bit_Synthesis.
This is the full interview with Rosa Menkman.
Me: How do you first develop and explore an idea/concept?
Rosa Menkman: For me working with glitches is part of my ongoing theoretical research. This means that sometimes I am inspired by something I read while at other times my practical work inspires me to read more about a particular subject.
Me: What methods, mediums, and tools do you use?
RM: I don't feel like I am stuck into using any particular hard or software, or within the distinction between analogue and digital or sound and image. I have my preferences, but my final choice of method really depends on the moment.
Me: What are some of your influences? Where do you find inspiration?
RM: Last week I gave a little talk about my musical inspirations, from a chipmusic perspective. [[ rosa-menkman.blogspot.com/2010/04/alternative-composing-in-chipmusic.html ]] I think Goto80 has been a really big inspiration to me - his work has a lot of tension in it; it takes place within this vortex of randomness, brokenness and perfection, which keeps me interested. I am naturally a curious person so I ask a lot of questions and always search for these tensions in my own life and research. Besides music, I think my main influences and inspiration are in concerts and festivals, books and bad television. I think i find most inspiration between the cracks of whatever else I do in daily live.
Me: Do you see flickr as a community, or simply a platform on which to display your work?
RM: I used to be more active on flickr, but because my personal work revolves around video, I think I moved a lot of my attention to platforms like Vimeo. There I started a similar (video) pool, which I called noise artifacts. [[ vimeo.com/groups/artifacts ]] I think the community on Flickr used to be more active, there used to be a little bit more discussion on there. Now it seems to have become more of a dumping pool - or platform.
Me: What are the pros and cons of displaying work on flickr?
RM: I don't like it that flickrs video embedding has such bad compression, also, lately I have been seeing flickr compressing my (original size) photo files. Other then this there is no real bad points. I think it is a great way to find more inspiration and find people that have similar interests and research.
Me: Besides flickr, where else do you display/exhibit your work?
RM: In vimeo and on my website. Outside of the internet also in various places, in galleries, exhibitions and festivals. Sometimes I also give lectures and workshops on glitches, file formats and other related subjects.
Me What display environments and mediums would you like to explore in the future?
RM: In May I will be doing a live audiovisual television show in Denmark. Therefore I am getting deeper into composing and sound generation. I am also hoping that during the summer I will find some more time to play around with videomixers and other hardware.